1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a coolant manifold that is installed to a fuel cell stack and serves for distributing or collecting coolant, and also to a method for supplying and discharging coolant.
2. Description of the Related Art
A fuel cell stack constituted of a plurality of stacked unit cells such as a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) causes heat generation when generating electric power.
To counter this problem, as disclosed in JPA 2000-164238 (see FIGS. 1, 4) and JPA 2005-005196 (see FIGS. 1, 2), there have been provided techniques to cool a fuel cell by circulating a coolant such as radiator liquid mainly including ethylene glycol through the fuel cell stack so as to prevent an excessive temperature increase and maintain a desired temperature for power generation.
Cooling techniques to realize more efficient cooling for a fuel cell stack has been desired, and it would be desirable to provide a coolant manifold that is installed to a fuel cell stack, thereby to efficiently cool the fuel cell stack, as well as a method for supplying and discharging coolant using this coolant manifold.